


Fill for me a brimming bowl

by lowriseflare, threeguesses



Category: When Calls the Heart (TV)
Genre: Class Differences, F/M, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 01:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6353467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowriseflare/pseuds/lowriseflare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/pseuds/threeguesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack asks Elizabeth Thatcher for her hand in marriage one sunny April morning on the site of their future homestead, dropping to his knee in full uniform, shin sinking into the muddy spring grass. [Elizabeth and Jack and the consequences of marrying across a class divide.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fill for me a brimming bowl

**Author's Note:**

> There isn't even sex in this one, I don't know who we are anymore. "It's like, a real-life problem that she can't cook, isn't it?" lowriseflare said one day, and I was like, "Oh yeah, objectively he really shouldn't be marrying her at all, she's a terrible choice of partner for frontier Alberta," and lowriseflare was like, "Huh. That's actually a very interesting conflict to me," and then we wrote this.

Jack asks Elizabeth Thatcher for her hand in marriage one sunny April morning on the site of their future homestead, dropping to his knee in full uniform, shin sinking into the muddy spring grass.

“Yes,” Elizabeth says immediately. “Yes, of _course_ I will, I’d be honored to—oh, Jack, get up, come here, you'll be filthy!” But she's reaching for him when she says it, laughing, like being filthy might not be the worst fate in the world, and when Jack kisses her that's what he remembers, the feeling of her smile stamping itself against his mouth.

She sends a telegram to her mother, then Jack sends a telegram to his, the two of them dictating to Mr. Yost so quickly he has to ask them to repeat themselves twice, the words tripping out of them both like streams over a brook bed, like trying to hold joy in your hand. When Elizabeth comes to the part about the engagement, Ned stops them, insisting on opening a case of port from his wares to celebrate. Jack still hasn’t caught his breath. He didn’t think she would say no, precisely, but the relief of her saying yes is so deep and sweet it nearly takes out his knees.

They’re drinking a toast as Elizabeth’s answer comes over the line, the Thatchers and their tycoon fortune and their personal telegraph machine; Jack watches Elizabeth’s face fall slightly as she reads it, but when she comes to the end of the page she breathes a sigh and smiles at him like dawn coming up. “They say ‘Congratulations,’” she tells him, and she looks so happy Jack hardly cares what else they may have said.

Three days later the reply comes from his own mother:  _You’re a damn fool. Love, Ma._

The euphoria doesn’t wear off for a solid week, the whole town dropping by the jail to wish him congratulations and a virtual banquet of baked goods pouring in the door, like every woman in Hope Valley wants one last chance at feeding him before his bachelor days come to an end. Elizabeth herself wants a long engagement, and Jack wants to give Elizabeth whatever she wants. It’s not until after the third time she kisses him goodnight with an open mouth that it occurs to him to wonder _how_ long exactly.

“Not too long,” she assures him when he asks, smiling her pleased housecat smile and slipping her arm through his. They rode down to the water, then dismounted to walk for awhile, the dappled light through the pine trees casting her hair red and gold. “I just want to enjoy this, don’t you?”

Jack nods. He _is_ enjoying it, how official it all feels and and the slightly proprietary sense he gets now when he puts his arm around her—his fiancee, he thinks, liking the sound of it. His future wife. The pleasure of imagining their life together—telling her all his plans for the homestead, which he's kept to himself until now for the sake of the surprise. He wants a vegetable garden like his Ma used to have, a wide porch for rocking at the end of the day. “Cows and chickens, of course,” he tells Elizabeth, lacing their fingers together. “Maybe some sheep?”

“Sheep,” Elizabeth repeats, and something about the way she says it keeps Jack from adding that he's also been picturing five or six children.

“We can’t have Rip getting lonely,” he says instead, slowing them to a stop and tilting her face up for a kiss. He’s been doing that more often than he strictly should as of late, nearly doubling the number of times they’ve kissed in this past week alone. Elizabeth keeps letting him too, on their walks and in the rowboat, in her house after sundown, keeps looking at him with those clever blue eyes and that vividly pink mouth. All of her seems awash with extra colour since Jack proposed, like some cosmic painter has suddenly started using a heavier hand. She’s almost irresistible.

Elizabeth hums against his mouth. “Well, if it’s for _Rip_ ,” she says, her hand coming up to cup his face. Jack always feels vaguely girlish when she touches him that way, as if she’s the man and he’s the woman. He doesn’t know what it says about him that he doesn’t half mind.

“Sheep are very friendly,” he reassures her, tucking her hand inside his elbow and continuing their walk. “We could always name one after you.” Elizabeth laughs.

All in all, it’s a lovely spring walk, all of nature buzzing around them with frenetic energy, a rush of pollination and nest-building, be fruitful and multiply. Jack is considering another loop of pond, perhaps even another kiss, when they come upon the horses and find only one of them still standing there.

“Oh, Jack.” Elizabeth drops his arm. “I must have forgot to tie…” And yes, her horse does seem to be the one that’s missing, the Company-owned mare with a blaze face that does mail delivery and that, strictly speaking, Jack isn’t supposed to be borrowing. Blast it all.

“It’s all right,” he tells her, even though really it isn’t. She’s been living in Hope Valley for over a year and riding horses for half that time, not to mention tethering was the very first lesson he taught her, before tacking or mounting or even how to avoid being kicked. She’s taken to the rest of it remarkably well, he reminds himself. And she did just get engaged. Girls are supposed to get silly over engagements, Jack thinks, flighty or giggly or what have you. Never mind that Elizabeth isn’t strictly a girl and hasn’t been for some years. “I’ll take Sargent and go after—” Only he can’t, because he can’t leave Elizabeth here by herself. Jack curses aloud.

“ _Jack_ ,” Elizabeth chides softly, sounding surprised and a bit cowed by his outburst. Immediately he feels like a heel.

“I’m sorry,” he says, rubbing his hand briskly through the hair at the back of his head. He’s never sworn in front of her before. “Here, climb up in front of me.”

It takes them the better part of the afternoon to find the mare, happily munching new grass beneath a copse of trees, and then another hour to catch her reins and calm her down enough that Elizabeth can ride her back into Hope Valley. It’s past dark by the time they make it, the spring breeze turned to a damp, bitter chill. Jack gave Elizabeth his jacket when he caught her shivering, hours ago now. His arms and neck sting in the cold.

“Evening ride, constable?” calls one of the millworkers slouching outside the saloon, in a tone that raises Jack’s hackles. But then Elizabeth says his name again, quietly, and he sighs in resignation before carrying on. It’s the first either one of them have spoken in quite some time.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him when he drops her at her doorstep. Her mouth is turned down at the corners, penitent, but she also looks slightly confused, like she doesn't understand what there is to be quite so worked up about.

Jack shakes his head. “It was an accident,” he says, wanting to remind them both. Elizabeth hands back his jacket. Once he’s shrugged it on she takes hold of the lapels and tugs gently, kissing the corner of his mouth when he bends.

“For coming to my rescue,” she says.

So: all’s well that ends well, really. Still, that night Jack can’t sleep. It occurs to him to wonder about it for the first time, what it will be like marrying a woman who forgets to tie up the horses.

  

A fortnight after Elizabeth and Jack get engaged, the church society ladies hold a box social to raise money for new notebooks for the school. Hope Valley still uses chalk and slates, but last month Elizabeth told Abigail that the city schools were all switching to notebooks, and Abigail told the pastor, and he told Dottie Ramsey, and now here they are. Elizabeth feels faintly like she gave everyone the run around—she tries not to let the parents know how things are done in the big city schools if she can help it—but she isn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She has plans for those notebooks, penmanship and paragraph composition, pages upon pages of knowledge stacked up like a layer cake.

What Elizabeth  _isn't_ planning on is participating in the social, given past experience. But come Monday morning the mothers start on a campaign of needling that lasts all week long, prodding her to bring just one pie, just one sandwich. Florence Blakely especially is a thorn in Elizabeth’s side, insisting it’s only right that the _school_ teacher participate in the _school_ fundraiser, like Elizabeth is personally snatching money out of the hands of babes by not playing along. Still, it isn’t until Cat Montgomery pulls her aside to explain that what the mothers are truly after is more young, unattached women to drive up bidding among the new millworkers that Elizabeth agrees make up a basket.

“I have a fiancé,” she tells Cat, clapping out two erasers on the church stoop. It gives her a little thrill to say the word. “And anyway, isn’t box social bidding blind?”

Cat waves her off. “Everyone knows whose box is whose,” she says. “Please, if only for Clara’s sake. You can’t let her be the only woman under thirty competing against Rosemary.”

Well. Elizabeth is a sight closer to thirty than she is to twenty, but she’s flattered anyway. “If you think it’s best,” she tells Cat, and gives the erasers one last clap.

So, all that’s left is to fix a box lunch.

Best to keep it simple, she thinks, meat pie and shortbread and a jug of lemonade, only that morning as she’s putting it all together somehow she gets distracted, the recipes all jumbled in her head and the clock ticking away on the wall beside the window. She's just accidentally dumped the sugar in with the beef when Jack knocks on the door of the rowhouse.

“Miss Thatcher,” he says, doffing his hat as he comes in, smiling the same bashful grin that normally melts her like the last of winter’s snowfall. “How are you this lovely spring morning?”

“Fine,” Elizabeth says tightly, hoping he won’t notice what is rapidly turning into caramel-covered steak bubbling away on her stovetop and will leave her to try and rectify her error in peace. Can she rinse it off, she wonders? Oh, for Lord’s sake, this is why she didn’t want to do the social to begin with. She should have just donated money instead.

“Everything all right?” His gaze takes in the mess of pots and pans, the burnt shortbread and the half-rolled out pie crust. It’s too thin in places, Elizabeth already knows it, stretched and ready to split. The whole thing is an unmitigated disaster.

“The box social.” She pushes her hair off her face. She’s perspiring too, damp down her back and under her arms. If Mother could see her now. “I put my name down at the last moment.”

Jack snags a bit shortbread off the tray, only managing to pry up half the cookie. “Oh?” he asks, taking a dishearteningly small bite, like a mouse testing for poison. “And who’s going to have the pleasure of sharing this lunch with you? Henry Gowan? Bill Avery?”

Elizabeth’s head snaps up. “Oh Jack, you  _have_ to bid, you can't let me just—” He’s laughing at her, his eyes alight. “Ja-ack,” she chides, flicking a dish towel at him. “It’s no joking matter. I’m doing this for charity.”

In the end he does bid, of course, and handsomely—although not _too_ handsomely, which Elizabeth appreciates. She supposes he learned his lesson after the tongue-lashing she gave him at last year’s miner’s games. They take their picnic to the steps of the schoolhouse, sunshine and view of the water and, Elizabeth can’t help but imagine, the chance to sneak a private kiss or two.

“You don't have to say it,” she tells him, as they unpack the box and spread white cotton napkins in their laps. “I know you would have been better off spending your money on a bowl of beans at the saloon.”

“That's not true,” Jack says, though he doesn't sound particularly convincing. “Although you know, I’m sure Abigail would be happy to give you some pointers. For next time, I mean.”

Elizabeth huffs and shakes out her napkin. “Oh, Jack, Abigail’s got the cafe to run and two children to look after. She doesn't have time to be giving me remedial kitchen help.”

“Abigail’s your friend,” Jack says evenly. “I’m sure she'd be happy to lend a hand.”

“Lend a—” Elizabeth laughs. “What is it, Jack, are you worried I won’t be able to feed us when we’re married?” She's smiling as she says it, but Jack isn't, and after a moment Elizabeth frowns. “ _Are_ you?”

Jack shrugs uncomfortably, looking down at the uneaten piece of steak pie on his lap. Its scorched bottom crust stares up at Elizabeth like an accusation, somehow even worse-looking out here in the sunshine, blistered and blackened like it’s been set upon by disease. “The homestead will be over two mile away from town,” he points out. “One of us has to cook.”

“‘One of us will have to—’” Elizabeth draws herself up, ruffled. She hadn’t thought her lack of culinary skills mattered to him. She had even gone so far as to flatter herself that he found it endearing, that it was just another trait that set her apart from the other Hope Valley women, one of many. “Jack, I hate to tell you this, but if you wanted perfect home cooking you probably should have picked a different wife.” She resists fluffing out the skirt of her dress as she speaks, a fine tiered muslin from Hamilton.

“Oh, no, don't misunderstand me,” Jack says, taking her hand earnestly like he’s pledging his troth. “I knew your skills when I proposed to you, I just—”

“Knew my _skills_?” Elizabeth rears back, taking her hand with her. “What does _that_ mean?”

Jack looks like a hunter who wandered into a clearing expecting a rabbit and found himself face to face with a grizzly bear instead. She can almost see him rifling through possible answers in his brain. “It’s nothing to get upset over,” he begins. “I just think if you tried—”

“If I tried?” She _did_ try, is the unfairness of it, but she's certainly not about to admit that to Jack. “That’s fine talk,” she says instead, “coming from someone who made such a fuss about not changing himself one bit to suit anyone else.”

Jack’s expression darkens. “This isn't the same,” he says immediately, and oh, that's easy for him to say. After all, Elizabeth chose him just the way he is, a constable of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police who wants to live out in the wilderness with only cows and sheep for company. “All I’m asking is if you really think you're capable of the realities of life on a homestead.”

“ _Capable_?” To Elizabeth’s horror, she feels sudden, angry tears pricking at the back of her eyes. Capable, after over a year of life in Hope Valley, hundreds of miles away from her family, enduring every _possible_ humiliation and hardship and—Elizabeth stands up. “If you'll excuse me,” she says crisply, taking some small mean pleasure in the preciseness of her drawing room elocution, “I have lessons to plan for my students. I wouldn't want my _skills_ to be seen as lacking in that arena as well.”

“ _Elizabeth_ ,” Jack starts, looking utterly baffled. Elizabeth shuts the schoolhouse door neatly in his face.

 

Jack lingers on the church steps for a handful of minutes before realizing that Elizabeth does not intend to come back out. He lingers a few more wondering if he should knock and apologize, even though he isn't sorry and he doesn't know what precisely he would be apologizing _for_ , since there was nothing he said that wasn't the truth. This is a bad pie and bad shortbread, the one too sweet and the other too salty, and both of them burned besides. Lord, even the lemonade has seeds in it.

Abruptly he realizes what this looks like, him picking over the remains of their meal for flaws like a miser about to fire the house cook. But instead of making him sorry it makes him even angrier, and he stands up in a rush, brushing crumbs off his lap. After a moment’s consideration he leaves the lunch where it is and strides back into town, planning on a bowl of beans at the saloon after all, and maybe a tank of beer besides.

He ends up back at the jail with Rip instead, stewing hungrily.

It wouldn't be right to be seen eating in public less than an hour after the box social, not when the whole town knows what he bid and who he bid on. Jack is a gentleman, even if some people don't think so. He flops down on his trundle bed and stares at the ceiling, furious and embarrassed and a little worried. Should they be fighting so soon after an engagement? Should they be fighting at all? All at once Jack wishes he had courted more women before Elizabeth, wishes he had any idea of what was expected and how to proceed. Rosie was so long ago and they were so young, and from the same town besides. If something like this had happened with Rosie, one or both of their parents would have stepped in. But it _wouldn’t_ have happened, Jack thinks in frustration, because Rosie may be fancy now, but at her heart she’s still a prairie girl who knows how to shoot and ride and cook.

Jack sighs. If he’s being truly honest with himself, he _likes_ that Elizabeth is beautiful and delicate, that after a year in a town that works as hard as this one, her hands are still soft and smooth. When he was small, every time his mother took him along to the general store he used to finger the single bolt of velvet on the wall, admiring how smooth and rich it felt in comparison to all the cotton and flannelette. He would beg his mother to buy some to make herself a dress, a hat, even a hair ribbon, just so he could have the pleasure of their family owning something so fine. Elizabeth stands out just like that. Jack takes great pride in the fact that she’s the fanciest thing in Hope Valley. He just wishes she were practical, too.

 _You’re a damn fool,_ his mother’s telegram had said. She never did buy any velvet.

Well, maybe Jack is, but just the thought of choosing a different wife makes him feel faintly ill.

“Alternately, it could be the meat pie,” he says to Rip, who looks up from under the table and groans.

 

Elizabeth stays at the school for close to an hour, steaming mightily. She does not get a single lesson planned. _Capable_ , he said, like she’s a draft horse or a herding dog. Elizabeth didn't think people married each other to be _capable_. She thought they married for love.

After an hour is up, she’s starting to feel rather more bruised than angry, even coming around to humiliated. When she had her coming out in Hamilton at eighteen, none of the eligible men seemed to want court her, preferring the cool elegance of Viola or the giggly flirting of Julie—and this even when Julie hadn’t had her coming out yet, when Elizabeth was the only viable option. Viola said it was because Elizabeth talked too much, but Julie has always chattered a mile a minute and never had a single problem attracting suitors. Elizabeth rather thinks it was because she herself talked about the wrong things.

Well, nothing was ever solved by crying over it. Elizabeth picks herself up and makes her way over to Abigail’s cafe, the ruined box lunch banging against her hip.

“Jack thinks we’re going to starve to death once we’re married,” she announces when she arrives, plopping the basket on one of the little bistro-style tables. Half the room looks up from their supper, but Elizabeth lifts her chin, refusing to care. She’s a Thatcher, after all. These people have never even tasted real French pastry, have never seen sugarwork on a professionally decorated layer cake or been inside a chocolatrie. Elizabeth is _not_ the one to be pitied here.

“Oh dear.” Abigail stops pouring tea for one of the new millworkers, wiping her palms on her apron. “Well. Why don't you come back to the kitchen?”

Elizabeth does, bustling down between the tables with her nose in the air. Every plate has a roll or a sweet bun or bit of pie on it, simple easy fare, and Elizabeth knows how to make not a whit of it. And that’s part of the problem, in truth—Elizabeth once told Abigail she made the best chocolate chip cookies Elizabeth had ever tasted, and that was true, but only because Elizabeth has only eaten perhaps a dozen chocolate cookies in her life. What’s the point of a chocolate chip cookie when you can have strawberry savarin or tarte tatin? Moreover, what’s the point of slaving over a passable meat pie when lobster exists in the world? That’s Elizabeth’s feeling. The food in Hope Valley is good, but it wouldn’t even be served at a public house in Hamilton. Elizabeth frankly doesn't see why she should exert herself to learn to cook it.

 _Because Jack likes it_ , answers a tiny, nagging voice at the back of her head. _And you love Jack._

“Jack’s a toad,” is what she says out loud. She flings herself into a kitchen chair and snatches a biscuit off the tray—she is, truthfully, starving—before launching into the whole sad tale.

It feels good to tell it, like ripping out a row of crooked stitches—which, Elizabeth thinks bitterly, she would know all about, being so woefully inept in all matters domestic. “I _would_ be happy to show you,” Abigail interjects, when Elizabeth gets to that part.

“I know you would,” Elizabeth says, because Abigail is the best and honestly only true woman friend she's ever had.

Abigail smiles sympathetically. “But I suppose that’s not exactly the point.”

“No,” Elizabeth agrees. The point is that Jack is completely overreacting. The point is that she’s worried he’s secretly right. The _point_ is that this man is supposed to love her unconditionally, and she’s spent the afternoon feeling like an unmarriageable spinster instead. “It’s not.”

“Well.” Abigail pulls another tray of biscuits out of the oven, setting them on the rack to cool. They’re plain wholemeal flour, unadorned, so simple they likely only have three or four components. Elizabeth could not name a single step of their assembly if she tried. “What would you like to do?”

Elizabeth huffs. “I suppose you should teach me to…” She trails off uselessly. Abigail’s face is the picture of compassion, like Elizabeth is suggesting she be taught how to cut off her own arm. “Something simple? A roast and potatoes, perhaps?”

“If that’s what you want,” Abigail says, and it isn’t, of course, but Elizabeth isn't sure what else to do. It’s her first month in Hope Valley all over again, being furious with Jack but seeking his approval, doing all sorts of foolish things like trying to teach her own self to ride, carrying her own too-heavy groceries and lying about truant coal boys. Lord, she has never contorted herself like this for anyone before. She wants him to approve so desperately it’s a physical feeling, crouching on her chest like a golem.

“Just a roast,” Elizabeth says again, before bursting into noisy tears. Abigail makes soothing sounds, cupping her face and petting her hair, so much more demonstrative than Elizabeth’s own mother _._ For the first time in months Elizabeth misses home desperately, misses the grand staircase and the servants and the utter certainty that certain things were simply beneath her.

“There now, there’s a girl,” Abigail murmurs. “We’ll fix you up.” Elizabeth cries harder and wishes there wasn't anything to fix.

 

Jack spends a hungry, sleepless night tossing and turning. He's awake to watch the sun creep above the horizon to the east of the jail. He feels like a heel, like one of those poor fools who sinks so low as to write Rosemary with their romantic problems. It's only when Jack catches himself trying to imagine what Rosemary’s advice in this particular scenario might _be_ that he flings back the covers, so abruptly that Rip scrambles across the room in surprise.

“Sorry, old buddy,” Jack says hurriedly, reaching for his suspenders as Rip glares. “But it's time to resolve this once and for all.”

He’s dressed and at Elizabeth’s row house in less than a quarter hour, knocking on her door with three hard, official-sounding raps. When she answers she looks tired and lovely, her hair spilling loose across her shoulders. She isn't wearing any shoes.

All at once Jack forgets why he was upset with her to begin with. It reminds him of back when he first met her, the way he’d manage to convince himself she was the silliest woman in the west one minute and the next not be able to think for how hard his heart was slamming against the inside of his chest.

So, they’ll starve, he thinks. He's starving now anyway, isn't he? Starving doesn't seem so bad.

“Elizabeth,” he begins, but Elizabeth cuts him off.

“Would you do me the honour of coming for dinner tonight?” she asks. Her face is a stone wall.

Jack pauses. “I—to your house?” It feels like the first time he tried to ask her out courting all over again, _do you expect me to cook._

Elizabeth nods.

She isn’t smiling. Jack wants to take her hands in his, to touch her face, her hair, to kiss her, oh Lord to kiss her. He’s going to _marry_ her, he remembers all over again, they’re finally going to be able to—truly, Jack doesn’t care about food at all. “If you’re sure?” he asks, feeling immensely wrong-footed.

Elizabeth’s face darkens, and too late he realizes it sounds like yet another slight against her culinary abilities. “I’m sure, _constable_ ,” she says crisply, crossing her arms and stepping back into the house. “I’ll expect you at six o’clock sharp.”

Jack puts his hands in his pockets, shifting his weight. He’s not certain her disapproving voice should have quite this effect on him. He’s also not certain she should be the one setting this date, should be saying things like _do me the honour_ and _I expect you at six._ He feels like a green girl with his first suitor. “I—all right. Yes. Of course. If you want.”

“I want,” Elizabeth says firmly, and shuts the door in his face for the second time in as many days.

Well. Jack spends the rest of the day doing his rounds and wondering if he still needs to apologize. He thinks of the end of their other fight, _the best way to make up_ and her wet wet mouth, how she kissed him back so eagerly in the mine for whole minutes before Jack took it into his head to stop them. At present, Elizabeth does not seem to be in the kissing mood.

He scrubs his neck and underneath his fingernails and brings her a bouquet of wildflowers, feeling about as nervous as he ever has calling on a woman. “You look beautiful,” he says, when she answers the door. It’s the truth, too, the heart-shaped neckline of her dress and her hair pulled back in a long, curly tail down her back, her skin clear and glowing. Lord, Jack loves her so much.

“Thank you.” Elizabeth smiles, but there’s something wrong about it, the way it doesn’t quite reach the top half of her face. “These are lovely,” she says, taking the flowers. “Please, come in.”

The kitchen is immaculate, none of the frantic mess he usually associates with Elizabeth’s dinner preparations. More shocking than that: “Something smells _delicious_ ,” Jack says, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

Elizabeth plunks the flowers in a vase. “I’m glad.”

It _tastes_ delicious too, a savory roast and buttery potatoes flecked with salt and herbs. _You made this?_ Jack opens his mouth to say, then thinks better of it. He needs to say something, though, that much is obvious: Elizabeth is sitting across from him more or less silently, picking around the edges of her dinner. The tabletop between them might as well be the Atlantic ocean.

“This is excellent,” Jack says finally. “My compliments to the chef.”

“That would be me,” Elizabeth says without looking up. “In case you were wondering.” She spears a potato with pointed finality. Jack always gets an indecent little thrill out of watching her eat, her neat white teeth and the precise, high society bites she takes. At this particular moment it’s worse than ever, her flashing silverware and dangerously downturned mouth. Jack almost feels as though he should excuse himself.

“You did a wonderful job,” he tells her, looking determinedly at his own plate. Elizabeth doesn't answer.

It’s the quietest dinner of Jack’s life. He makes a few stabs at conversation, about the weather and the gossip in town, but each time Elizabeth only says a word or two in reply before they lapse back into silence. Finally, in desperation, Jack talks about his plans for the homestead again, lingering over the details he thinks she’ll like, like the featherbed and how he intends to rig the pump to water all through the house, through the bathtub and the sinks both, how it’ll be the only house with running water in all of Hope Valley. He sounds pedantic even to his own ears, roof construction and the kinds of windows they can have brought in from Cape Fullerton, but Elizabeth just nods at him, wide-eyed, her face not giving anything away.

“If you think that’s best,” Elizabeth says, and all right—Jack may not exactly be a savant when it comes to women, but he knows when he’s in trouble.

“Elizabeth,” he asks, pitching his voice low and conciliatory. “Pardon me for asking, but are you upset with me?”

“No,” Elizabeth says, clearing their plates with a loud clatter. “Why ever would you think that?” Jack lets it drop.

There’s peach cobbler for dessert. It’s delicious, almost better than Abigail’s. Jack feels vaguely ill.

 _Do you still want this?_ he wants to ask her. Which of course begs the underlying question: _Do you still want_ me?

Normally after dinners like this they’d have coffee or tea on the chesterfield, or perhaps walk a loop around the outskirts of town—both of those activities a mere pretext for what Jack really wants to do at the end of the evening, which is of course to take her in his arms. Tonight, though, Elizabeth dabs delicately at her mouth with her napkin before placing it on the tabletop and smiling a thin, chilly smile. “Well,” she says. “I suppose it’s getting late. Thank you for coming.”

Jack feels like he’s been knocked right off his horse. “Elizabeth,” he begins, standing and crossing the table to be nearer to her. “Please.”

“Please what, Jack?” Elizabeth looks at him blankly. If she’s acting, she’s a damn sight better at it than Rosemary is.

Jack takes a breath. “If you’re angry with me—”

“Why would I be angry with you?” She rises to her feet and walks right by him, placing the rest of the cobbler in the icebox before busying herself with wiping the already immaculate table. Jack is completely out to sea. It’s as if she’s become a Sphinx or a cipher, completely unknown and unknowable.

“All right.” He stands there aimlessly for another long moment, but Elizabeth doesn't look up from her tidying. Finally he walks to the door and dons his hat. “Thank you for dinner,” he says quietly.

She comes to him then, a bustle of skirts and sour prickliness, her elbows turned out at her sides like wings. “It was nothing,” she announces, and presents him with her cool cheek.

It’s like kissing marble. Jack cups one of those sharp elbows in his palm and leans in, half expecting a jab to his ribs. Elizabeth smells like herself, powder and lilacs, but also the slightest bit metallic, like cordite or iron. Like blood.

“Goodnight,” Jack mutters into the whorl of her ear. Elizabeth says nothing.

Jack heads straight to Abigail’s. The cafe closes at eight o’clock but he knocks anyway, too rattled to sit with this even overnight. Abigail answers the door looking worried, a kerosene lamp in hand and a nightcap on her head. Abruptly, Jack realizes the children must already be in bed.

“Police business, constable?” Abigail asks, but something in her face suggests she knows that’s not the case.

Jack shakes his head. “I apologize,” he tells her, feeling foolish and sorry for imposing. Feeling _young_. He thinks of the last time he came to her like this, bears and deer, the notion of Elizabeth falling for that skunk Billy Hamilton itching like a burr underneath his skin. “I know it’s late.”

“Nonsense,” Abigail says, opening the door and ushering him inside. “I was just about to have a cup of tea. Would you like to join me?”

Jack would. She’s easy to confide in, Abigail, a good listener. Jack’s own mother wasn’t much for feelings talk; she taught him how to shoot and ride and and skin a squirrel in case of emergency, but very little indeed about matters of the heart.

“I see,” Abigail says when he’s finished, with a knowingness in her voice that makes Jack wonder if she’s already heard the other side of this particular story. “The roast was successful, but the evening was not.”

Jack nods miserably.

“Perhaps Elizabeth thought this was what you wanted,” Abigail says.

“ _No_ ,” Jack says, and the intensity of his own reaction surprises him. “I mean, yes, I suppose it was, but—” he breaks off helplessly.

“But you’d rather Elizabeth be happy and know you love her the way she is?” Abigail prods.

“Well,” she says when Jack nods again, having apparently lost the capacity for speech. “Perhaps you ought to tell her that, then.”  

It sounds so simple, when she puts it that way, so logical. But it doesn’t feel logical at all. “Still, it’s not—it’s a true problem, Abigail, how will we eat?”

“Constable Thornton,” Abigail says firmly, a touch of steel creeping into her voice for the first time. “Honestly. If you wanted a coal mining girl you should have married one.”

It’s almost verbatim what Elizabeth herself said on the church steps, before she understood he was serious and her face changed entirely, slow realization like dawning some horrible sunrise. Oh, but Jack wishes he could take everything back. “I _don’t_ ,” he insists, feeling the overwhelming need to set the record straight. “I want Elizabeth. Only Elizabeth.”

“Well.” Abigail stands, carrying the teapot over to the basin sink. “Those are lovely words, but I’m not the one who needs to hear them.”

No. Jack supposes she isn’t.

 

It’s early morning when Elizabeth hears the knock at her door, practically pre-dawn, grey light shining thinly through the windows and the night’s chill still curling in under the baseboards. It’s not a school day but for a confused minute Elizabeth thinks it is, thinks it’s much later in the morning and she’s slept through first bell, one of the mothers come calling to scold her. When she answers the door and it’s just Jack, she is at once relieved and annoyed.

“Oh,” she says, crossing her arms over her nightdress. She wishes she’d reached for a shawl. “It’s you.” He’s wearing dungarees and a shirt of soft-washed cotton in a blue that makes his eyes look almost hazel. For half a moment Elizabeth forgets why she’s so angry with him and then, just as abruptly, she remembers. “I’m afraid I don’t have a hot meal prepared for you at the moment, constable. You’ll have to head over to the cafe for that.”

“Elizabeth.” Jack gives her a look that seems to say, _please_ , _enough now._ She notices he’s being very careful to keep his eyes on her face. “You know that’s not why I’m here.”

“Do I?” Elizabeth retorts, turning on her heel and marching across the room toward the kettle, modesty be damned. Let him be uncomfortable for a change. That’s what he gets for showing up at her house at such an ungodly hour. That’s what he gets for all of this. “I’m not so sure.”

“Well, that’s my fault, then. _Elizabeth_ ,” he says, as she bangs the kettle onto the stovetop. He’s followed her inside but stays near the doorway, as if he’s anticipating the need for a quick escape. Let him think she’s a fire breathing dragon. Let him think she’s Medusa herself. “I’m sorry if what I said hurt your feelings.”

“If what you said hurt my—” She whirls to face him, her braid swinging behind her like a pendulum. “But not sorry you said it in the first place, are you? Jack Thornton, I swear, I will throw this kettle straight at your head.”

Jack gapes at her, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. Too late Elizabeth remembers she isn't wearing a corset or any sort of support garment at all, all of her remarkably less tucked and tidy than usual; he’s seeing a damn sight more than her knees today, that’s for certain. She’s too apoplectic to care. “Cat got your tongue?” she asks meanly, and oh, yes, _there_ —just for a second his eyes drop. Elizabeth feels it like a ribbon of fire licking down her spine.

“Don't be cruel,” Jack says quietly. His face is very pink. Elizabeth blushes too, right to the roots of her hair, both from shame and from something else. They’ve never spoken of such things out loud before.

“I apologize,” she says stiltedly, turning back toward the kettle. “But my point stands.” She feels foolish now, and exposed, her flush creeping up the back of her neck despite the chill in the room. “Let me fetch a shawl,” she says, still facing the stove, and Lord, it’s so much worse saying it out loud.

“You don't need a shawl,” Jack says roughly. His voice is much closer than it was a moment ago. “We’re going to be man and wife.”

Oh, Elizabeth’s whole _body_ is aflame now. She daren’t turn around. “Are we? I thought you were going to forsake me for someone who could cater to your every whim.” She’s having to hold onto her anger with two hands now, to remind herself about the how’s and the why’s. Jack Thornton, she had no idea. She wouldn't have thought he’d have the nerve to say anything either way.

“Don’t even joke,” Jack says, one hand closing over her wrist. His voice is so so serious. “Elizabeth, look at me.”

Elizabeth looks. He’s blushing harder than she is, ears and neck, his eyes fixed on her face like it’s the North Star. “I mean it,” she tells him, even though now she’s not quite sure. “I’m furious with you.”

“I know,” he says, dark eyes wide and pained. “I’m sorry. I was worried—” he breaks off, tries again. “I was worried—”

“That I wouldn't be a suitable wife for you?” Elizabeth supplies crisply. “Because I’ll tell you, constable—”

“You're the _only_ suitable wife for me!” Jack interrupts her. Even in her blinding anger, Elizabeth is relieved he didn't let her verbalize the second half of that thought. “The rest of it doesn't matter, we’ll muddle through somehow, we’ll—”

“It shouldn't be muddling!” Elizabeth says, and it comes out more like a wail than she intends it. She's got that feeling in her face again, that hot raw tightness. She does _not_ want to cry. “It shouldn't be a compromise from the very beginning. And if that's how you feel about marrying me, then—”

“It's not,” Jack says immediately, putting his hands on either side of her face and getting closer now, his body large and looming and not quite pressed against hers. “Elizabeth. I swear to you, on my honor. It's not.”

“I don’t believe you,” Elizabeth whispers.

“Then let me convince you,” Jack says without a second’s pause, feeding her own line back to her like an actor reading a cue, and oh. Elizabeth's stomach swoops once, low and twisting, and then his mouth is on hers.

At first he kisses her like she did him that day out by the wood, soft and deliberate like another point in their argument, but Elizabeth can only hold herself stubbornly unmoving for so long. She opens her mouth on a sigh and Jack presses the advantage, tongue and lips both, and oh, this is a different kind of convincing altogether. His hands are at her waist now, startlingly intimate through just her nightdress, his bold mouth completely covering hers.

“Believe me now?” he asks, pulling back. His breath is coming ever so slightly faster.

Elizabeth shakes her head.

Jack looks at her uncertainly for a moment, like he isn’t sure if she’s teasing him or not. Elizabeth doesn’t quite know, herself. He kisses her again, though, with the kind of confident authority she normally associates with seeing him in uniform. This time, she can’t keep herself from kissing back. She feels herself sinking into the warm solid bulk of his body, heat bleeding straight through her nightdress.

“This doesn’t solve—” she starts, then breaks off with a gasp as Jack’s thumb brushes the side of her breast, seemingly by accident; Elizabeth feels it like a shock right down between her legs. Jack gasps, too, like they’ve both been hit by lightning. For a moment neither one of them says a word.

Jack recovers first. “This doesn’t solve anything,” he echoes, which is a blessing since Elizabeth herself is still speechless. His face is flushed red as a harvest beet. “I know that. But please, Elizabeth, try to hear me. You are the most beautiful, brilliant, courageous woman I’ve ever known, and I thank God every day that you agreed to marry me. Nothing about it is a compromise.”

Elizabeth chews her bottom lip for a moment, thinking. “Kiss me again,” she finally says.

Jack’s eyes darken. “If I do a thorough job will you forgive me?” he asks. His voice is low and serious but also laced with something else, something crawling with intent. Elizabeth shivers inside her thin nightdress.

“Perhaps,” she says, and before she’s even finished saying the word his hands are on her face, tilting her head up so his mouth can cover hers. This time when she kisses back she isn't kind about it, nipping at his tongue and tugging at his bottom lip, digging her fingernails into his shoulders. Jack makes a sound right into her mouth.

“Not nice,” he murmurs, pulling back and resting his forehead against hers.

“Why aren’t I nice?” Elizabeth whispers against his chin, playing dumb. Jack nudges her mouth back to his and nips carefully, teeth into her bottom lip and tugging lightly in demonstration, and oh. Oh.

“Because of that,” Jack says roughly. His hands are resting very high up her ribcage. _Higher,_  urges a low, quiet voice at the back of her head that doesn’t sound like her own voice at all, and when she opens her eyes Jack is staring at her with a look of such intensity she wonders if he somehow heard it, as well.

Elizabeth clears her throat. “I thank God for you, too,” she tells him, because it’s true and also because she’s tired, and she doesn’t want to fight anymore, but most of all because it’s Jack. It’s _Jack_ , she wants to marry him and have his children and live happily ever after on his enormous terrifying dream of a farm. She’ll learn to tend the blasted chickens, if that will make him happy. Her mother will be in fits over it. Everything will be all right.

Jack is smiling now, like he knows that he’s got her. Elizabeth pouts a bit in reply. “You’re rather lucky I like to be kissed by you,” she tells him, not entirely ready to give it all over.

“I’m rather lucky about a lot of things,” Jack says.

He steps toward the kitchen then, pulling two fresh brown eggs out of the bowl on the table and setting her heavy skillet on the stove. Elizabeth’s eyes narrow; she crosses her arms over her chest. “What are you—” she starts to ask him, but he glances over his shoulder and smiles.

“I’m making breakfast,” he tells her calmly. Elizabeth grins.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, apropos of nothing: I am _appalled_ that I am apparently watching this dumb show carefully enough to know the name of Jack's fucking horse.


End file.
